gitignore entries don't have to be permanent

I'll be honest. Today's tip is pretty obvious, but mostly in hindsight for me.

As usual, it wasn't until Aaron called me out during a pairing session that I realized I was overlooking something simple.

We author these tips inside a Laravel application repo as Markdown files in a content/tips folder.

A few weeks back, I drafted a couple of tips that I wasn't quite ready to publish. I needed to do more research and make sure I fully understood the way something worked.

In my mind, I thought "I'll finish this up in the next few days", so it wasn't a big deal that I had to keep manually ignoring them while committing the new tips I continued to publish each day.

But after a few weeks of this, Aaron called me out and told me to just tell Git to ignore them. He was right. Why deal with that little bit of friction every time I committed the new tips?

In my case, I created a new content/backlog folder, moved those in-progress tips into it, and added that whole folder to my .gitignore file.

But even if you had something more temporary, .gitignore entries don't have to be permanent. You can always remove it later if you want to start tracking it again.

Like I said, this is obvious in hindsight, but it's a good reminder to note those little bits of friction we face over and over, and realize we don't have to keep doing it that way.

Here to help,

Joel

P.S. Ever wonder if your Laravel app could be more secure? Download our free book for 7 steps to review.